Tyndale was not the first to attempt a translation of the Bible into English – William Wycliffe had attempted it in the 14th century. But Tyndale’s was the first to make a real impact. He was born in Gloucestershire in about 1494 and studied at both Oxford and Cambridge before being ordained priest. He was a skilled linguist, being fluent in seven languages, including Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German.His first edition of the New Testament was begun in England but completed in Worms, Germany, and published in 1526. It had to be smuggled into England because the only authorised Bible was the Latin Vulgate. A second edition of the New Testament was published in 1534 in Antwerp and formed part of a Bible which included much of the Old Testament. This was published after Tyndale’s death. Tyndale had a gift for pithy expression, deriving from his upbringing in Gloucestershire, a county noted for its proverbial speech. Many of his phrases were taken over unchanged into the King James Version and then into the wider language: “Eat, drink and be merry”; “Fight the good fight”; “The wages of sin is death”; “The powers that be”.He was the first to used the words “atonement” and “scapegoat”. But Tyndale was a heretic in the eyes of the Church and of his own king, Henry 8th. On 6th October 1536 he was publicly executed at Vilvorde, in Belgium. As an act of mercy, he was first strangled with a cord before his body was burnt at the stake. His ‘day’ is 6th October.